[H-GEN] HP officejet 6310 and suse10.1

Anthony Irwin anthony at server101.com
Tue Sep 19 19:49:23 EDT 2006


andrew laidlaw wrote:

> Your comments are, of course, totally appropriate for the 5% of the 
> world (including, I suppose, the likes of me) that intrinsically wants 
> to take a real interest in computing as an end in itself  (although 
> I've always resisted the temptation of such an abstraction).   I 
> remain concerned about what to do for the other 95%.

I guess I like to assume that people on the humbug lists or that are 
interested in linux/freebsd or whatever are wanting to learn more then 
just point and click. I think you will find that 90% of people at humbug 
would not know what most of the gui configuration tools are and tend to 
manually configure things and not use the user friendly alternatives. 
Although I haven't been to a meeting in quite a while so it may have 
changed.

But it probably isn't a bad thing to expose people to it all and see if 
they take it up. The whole free software movement relies on people 
contributing code, help and manuals, graphics etc. So exposing people to 
the technical side to see if they want to learn more isn't all bad 
providing they know they don't have too and you don't have to get a 
spare machine and start compiling your system from the ground up as its 
just a suggestion for learning more and I still think it is a worth 
while exercise for people to do.

> These you rightly divided into two groups - those who can't, or won't, 
> do even windows for themselves and the (shall we say) advanced 
> non-technical users, those who might arguably form the next logical 
> linux target market.

But if people don't do windows for themselves I don't believe they will 
get far with an alternative operating system no matter how easy it gets. 
If they have barely learned windows then why would they want something 
different, you have to be willing to learn something new and have an 
open mind and if they are not interested in what they have got then it 
will be harder for them because they will complain every time something 
is different to how they think it should be (I have seen this many times 
even with people who like linux they don't like say openoffice or the 
gimp because they expect it to work like word or photoshop).

They can't just walk into a computer store and say I want an accounting 
program and have myob or quickbooks thrown at them. Sure there are 
plenty of accounting programs that you can use in linux linux gnucash, 
kmymoney and a whole bunch more but if they are not interested in 
finding out what they are and installing them then they are not going to 
get far.

I think that people who never install new programs or add new hardware 
and the like could use linux quite happily for browsing the web, 
checking their email and typing the odd letter etc. Both gnome and kde 
are very easy to use desktops and if it is preinstalled like windows is 
for most people then they would use it happily (probably need someone to 
set up audio and video codecs for a full solution).

> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing in these comments 
> is the implicit assumption that members of the linux community should 
> either need or want to be interested in computing as an end in 
> itself.  I think this grossly underestimates the maturity and 
> potential of linux offerings: whilst there will always be a few petrol 
> heads, the market for cars is, and should be, made up of people who 
> are focussed on getting from A to B (and that in comfort). 

 From my personal point of view I would like it if people learned the 
basics of what they are doing and that goes the same for windows users.

If people want to do other things in life they generally expect to learn 
a bit about it, you don't try to drive a car or even play a game of 
chess or cards without learning how the games work. Yet if they sit 
behind a computer then a lot of people seem to think they don't need to 
learn anything and can remain clueless when it comes to computers.

If people don't want to compile kernels and manually edit configuration 
files then they don't have to. I believe that it has gotten to the point 
where that can be done for a lot of common things but I have never tried 
myself.

However it is a hard balance because for the free software community to 
survive we need to get people interested in the technical side not 
everyone but exposing people to it can show them that it is not as hard 
as they may have thought it to be.

Also I have put linux on a number of peoples computers and they always 
have no problem using it but generally go back to windows because they 
don't have an interested or care. If they don't care about software 
freedom and the ideals behind it then they will generally go back to 
windows because just about every software site out their is windows 
based and if they don't care about the freedom and flexibility, power 
etc then they won't want to find the free software alternative that 
works on their system and will just go back to what the masses use.

I guess I sell the technical aspects of it because thats what I like 
most about it. I have the power and freedom to do what ever I want and 
the only limitations is my own knowledge and willingness to learn and 
maybe others do to if that is what your hearing from a lot of people.

Kind Regards,
Anthony Irwin





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